SALT,ABKARI AND MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE
which the exclusive privilege of manufacture and supply is disposed of by tender and the prices to be charged at the distilleries, warehouses and wholesale dépôts are fixed by Government. The right to sell retail is sold separately, and shop by shop, by auction every year.
In the ordinary tracts the toddy revenue is managed on the tree-tax system, under which a tax is levied on every tree tapped. This was first introduced into certain of the taluks in October 1892. The right of retail sale at the shops approved by Government is in some cases sold annually by auction, or, more generally, on payment of fixed fees.
Toddy is obtained from the palmyra and date palms. The cocoanut is never tapped. The toddy-drawers are usually of the Yáta and Segidi castes. Their methods are the same as usual,the palmyra being tapped by cutting off the end of the flower spathe, and the date palm by making an incision like an inverted V close under the crown of leaves. In the zamindaris little care is taken to see that date trees are not overtapped, and hundreds of them may be seen ruined and even killed by excessive tapping.
Sweet toddy tapping is almost unknown. A little jaggery is made from palmyra toddy in two or three villages round Púdimadaka in the Sarvasiddhi taluk, but so far the industry is small.Date toddy is not used in this way.
The opium consumed in the district is all supplied from the Rajahmundry warehouse. The drug is generally eaten, maddat (the smoking mixture) being little in demand. On the plains the system of supply is the same as elsewhere. In the Agency, however, special conditions formerly resulted in special rules.
The Opium Act I of 1878 came into force on the 1st July 1880 and occasioned an immediate and abrupt rise in the price of the drug. In the Agency it went up from five (and even six) tolas a rupee to two tolas, and in some places none was procurable for love or money. The people in the Golgonda Agency, where almost everyone — men, women and children — eats opium, believed that Government had imposed the tax as a punishment for the Rampa rebellion, which was just over. The craving for a narcotic to which they had been habituated from childhood bat could no longer afford, and the deprivation of what they believed to be a panacea against malaria, dysentery and other hill diseases, rendered them openly discontented and restless, and the then Agent, Mr. Garstin, thought that special measures were necessary and suggested that Government should forego part of the
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